While ongoing forest fires around Chernobyl pose an immediate threat to health, the long-lived radioactive particles will continue cycling through the ecosystem in any case, even when the crisis is averted, warns nuclear historian Robert Jacobs.

RT:The
Chernobyl incident is labeled as one of the world’s worst nuclear
power accidents. How dangerous was this disaster compared to
other emergencies that we have seen?

Robert Jacobs: It was terribly damaging, partly
because of the lack of containment around the reactor core. The
explosion dispersed tremendous amount of the radioactive fuel
that was in the reactor into the cloud, in surrounding area in a
plume. So it actually spread the radiation quite significantly
across a large area.

There were explosions at the Fukushima plant but they did not
expel nearly as much fuel as was expelled at Chernobyl. So it is
a different kind of radiological disaster there. But certainly
the disaster in Chernobyl was catastrophic. As you can see
efforts to mediate against further contamination from those
releases are ongoing decades and decades later.

RT:Well how worried should we be
today?

RJ: We should definitely be worried because
there is a very significant danger. Because a lot of radiation
has been taken up by the trees and the plants in the area in the
exclusion zone, as well as outside the exclusion zone, but in
really heavy amounts in the exclusion zone.

If those trees and that brush is burned it will release the
radiation that is held inside the leaves, the stems and other
parts of the plant so they can be inhaled. When they are inhaled
they pose a tremendously dangerous threat to the people that
inhale those radionuclides into their lungs. And potentially some
of these particles could lodge inside their body. It is much more
dangerous than the radiation you experience from just standing
near them, which is also dangerous. But internalizing which can
also happen when they go to smoke, when they are aerosolized is
very dangerous.

One thing I would like to point out at is that regardless of what
happens now, even though there is clear danger from this forest
fire releasing this, even if this is under control, this is a
hazard that will remain. You have all these radionuclides round
up into this brush and into these trees.

And over the course of 100 years there’s bound to be a forest
fire that goes through that entire area. There is nuclear waste
buried there. So whether we can contain it now or not we face
this danger indefinitely.

RT:How worried should we be about the
“illness” factor now or in the future?

RJ: Well there are different ways that the
radiation can affect people. The initial explosion that happened
in Chernobyl laid down a tremendously contaminated area. And a
lot of people were exposed to the gamma radiation, which is sort
of like X-rays, they sort of penetrate through your entire body.
You receive a whole body doze and that can cause illnesses.

What we are facing now is the dangers from alpha-emitting
particles. These are individual particles. They are not so high
on radiation to our bodies externally but they are dangerous when
we internalize them inside of our bodies through inhaling them,
swallowing them, or through the cuts in the skin. And what will
happen then... it is possible for a particle like that to move
through the body and be expelled but it is also very likely that
it can be taken up by the body and stored someplace inside the
body. And while the amount of the radiation isn’t very high, it
will emit that radiation 24 hours a day to the cells around it.

So it is very likely for people who internalize alpha-emitting
particles to have a high dangers of developing cancers and other
immune disorders over the course of 10-20 years. This is far more
acute for children whose cells are dividing and whose bodies are
growing rapidly, these decease will present quicker.

RT:And what is the future of Chernobyl
then?

RJ: Well the future is this cycle repeating
itself again and again. There is obviously a lot of discussion to
obtaining proper funding in order to complete the Safe
Containment Facility. But you know there was a sarcophagus build
over it. It lasted less than 30 years. It has to be replaced.
This one will last for some period of time. It will have to get
replaced. These radionuclides will remain dangerous for, in some
cases tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. So
this cycle of needing to re-contain this corium will go on
certainly for some hundreds of years. And the danger of forest
fires which inevitably will move through every area over the
course of few hundred years will eventually re-release these
radionuclides that are in the tree and the brush. So in essence
you have a disaster like Chenobyl, you know, as some people say,
we know when this disaster happened, when it started, but we
don't know when it ends. Because it never really ends. As long as
we have these long-lived particles that will continue to be
dangerous long long into future generations, they’ll simply cycle
through the ecosystem and be taken up by plants and released by
fires. So this is the cycle we are in the midst of. We are at the
crisis point now, but even averting this crisis is not the end

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.